Ross Millard’s Weblog

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I left Salta in Argentina to head for Bolivia and the Salar De Uyuni.

I elected to take a 3 day tour from Tupiza, ending in Uyuni, rather than the usual 4 day tour and managed to find another 5 english people to make up the 6 for the tour. The guys were Tom, Natalie, Charlotte, Kate, and Sarah. The jeep took seven, the other two places being taken by our driver, ,and cook, Lucia.

The first day involved a rather early 5:30am start and about 13 hours cramped up in the jeep without a lot to see to be honest.

The second day came up with the goods though (albeit with a 3:30am start!), and another long day in the jeep but this time with plenty to see on the way in terms of the Stone Tree (see photos), geisers, hot springs, lots of lagunas with hundreds if not thousands of flamingoes. The lakes are different colours because of algae and look spectacular in the right light … again the photos don’t do them justice. We had a bit of a scare when we were still driving in the dark at 7pm and no sign of where we were going to stay. We all got the impression that the guides had got lost and we were going to spend the night in the jeep! Fortunately at around 7:30pm we arrived at our ‘Salt Hotel’ for the night, this was a hotel with beds and the floor made of salt … with mattresses and blankets of course.

The big guns were saved for the last day though, we got up early again to drive out across the salt flats to get some sunrise shots and it was amazing (see photos). We headed out across the lake to visit ‘Fish Island’ and had some great panaromic views of the entire lake; we also stopped at some holes in the salt crust to get some crystals from underneath – these are perfect cubes of salt of which I’ve got a couple that may or may not make the journey back home.

We also stopped at the official salt hotel which was almost entirely made of salt. I got one picture of the inside but was asked to buy something for the pleasure; Tom ended up buying some postcards as he felt guilty!

The tour overall was amazing and well worth it, and ending up in Uyuni was the right choice as there was little to do there and we all caught a bus to Potosi overnight in order to do the mine tour. Our bus broke down and took around half an hour to fix which was pretty impressive considering the noise it made when we shuddered to a halt.

We arrived early in Potosi, around 4am, and managed to get a tour booked for later that morning. The mines were a little claustrophobic but at least we didn’t have to work down them! There was plenty of decent air on the first level but as we travelled deeper into the mines you could smell and taste the bad quality air; apparently tainted with arsenic and other poisonous gases. We bought presents for the miners such as bottles of fizzy drinks and coca leaves; these went down well. We stopped an chatted to a 16 year old who was working down the mines at one of the faces and he said that there were others younger than him down there. That certainly put things into perspective. They don’t have a very long life expectancy but work there as they may make a big find and be able to retire for life.

We also bought some dynamite before the tour and the climax was our guide preparing it and blowing up some rocks outside the mine at the end. I tried to get a photo but the blast shocked me so much I got a picture of the sky!

We left later in the day for La Paz.

We arrived in La Paz on 16th April and had plans to spend a few days resting before catching a flight to Rurrenbaque to do a 3 day Pampas Tour; the alternative bus ride takes around 16-18hrs along a very dodgy road. As it turns out La Paz has quite a good night life so there were several days wandering around the town seeing some sights followed by some very late nights out and sleeping in the following day. Myself, Natalie and Charlotte actually booked a flight for 20th but we had it cancelled several times due to bad weather in Rurre which means the planes can’t land as it’s a grass strip.

This meant we couldn’t do a lot during the day (such as the Death Road bikes) as we had to call the airport at 2pm every day to see if flights were going. Eventually we took off on 22nd April and got to do our tour.

The Pampas was great, we managed to swim with Pink Dolphins almost immediately after leaving on the boat up the river; we saw crocodiles, fished for piranhas (although only Charlotte caught any), hunted for Anacondas (but didn’t find anything except a cobra which I trod on and screamed like a girl because it scared the life out of me!), and saw loads of birds and other Pampas living animals.

We returned to La Paz on 26th April and I soon began to feel a little ill which was a shame because Natalie and Charlotte were heading off the next day and it was their last night out. I had the Worlds Most Dangerous Road (Death Road) biking booked for the next day so I was hoping I was going to be okay. Fortunately I felt so much better after an early night and managed to navigate the road without any mishaps, and fortunately so did the rest of my group. The weather was appalling; we started in the freezing fog of the clouds early and headed down ‘into the good weather’ as the guide said. This meant it got a bit warmer as we hit the rain! The road is something like 62km long with a tarmac section (the new road which is a lot safer as the old road is only used by a few locals and for bike tours now) for the first 25km so this wasn’t much of a problem. It was when we reached the true death road that things got interesting. As it is mud/gravel the road was actually pretty easy to ride down as it was held together by the wet weather and the guides helped to regulate our speed so testosterone didn’t surpass our ability! We had a wicked time and were caked in mud by the time we reached the bottom.

I think the wet and cold weather took it’s toll on me though as I went for a ‘quick nap’ at 7pm and didn’t wake up until 9am the following morning.

I left La Paz for Copacabana on Lake Titicaca on 30th April after booking my place on a Dive Master course up in Utila, Honduras.

I took a tour of the Isla Del Sol which was a little disappointing except for the views across Lake Titicaca from the walk back across the island.

I left Copacabana and Bolivia on 2nd May heading my way into Peru through Puno (I didn’t stop for the floating islands) and straight on to Cusco to try to get a trek booked which took in Machu Picchu.